Comments on Elizaphanian
a meme? this is dreadful. the only other person i know who starts memes is david ker. and look where his last one went. horrible lyrics on dreadful theology.
i don't want to be remembered for this. give the credit to david.
sorry!
Or, in short, God doesn't intervene. And we can't question it because if we could question it, it wouldn't be worth worshiping.
Also free will- which doesn't make any sense when you think about it. We don't give our kids complete freedom of action- they'd get hurt. Yeah, I know- incomprehensibility.
Life isn't meaningful. Life simply IS. The belief that life has some special meaning or purpose is an ancient conceit- but nonsense none the less.
Seriously Sam, your sophisticated theology is simply non sophisticated stuff said nicer. Why should we consider it any more than any other nonsense?
It still seems to me that the starting point must be "what is this God substance that is omnipotent?" or " What is this God thing that may respond to suffering in a certain way?"
Slightly differnt questions are - Where is God? If you cut God in half do you have 2 Gods?
If those are not the right questions why? I understand that it is a very physical conception of God but if God does not exist physically how does he exist and in what way does he interact with the physical world? "We can't understand" seems to me very defeatest and to give no grounds for anyone to say that they believe in something they can't define. This is not only a point about science (which no doubt has already made you sigh) but also about what belief is.
Also what is the difference between this and the Arthur myth (he will come again at a time of peril)? Surely the difference must be something "real".
Does the president of the United States exist? (This is not the same question as 'does George W Bush exist?') What I'm trying to get at is that the concept of 'existence' works differently in different contexts. If we take a scientific definition of existence as our starting point (= material form of some sort) then I would be emphatic in saying that God does not exist. But there are things which exist in other ways, that are even more real than what can be measured with scientific instruments.
Forgiveness for example.
I agree in part here Sam, but would it not be also true to say the God does exist in a material form of some sort because of Jesus of Nazareth? Did he not ascend into heaven with a body? If he were physically here today scientifically we would be able to measure God's existence.
Sam Skinner - what do you mean by 'life isn't meaningful, life simply IS'? My relationship with my wife and daughter does not just happen in some arbitrary way, these relationships have meaning and a purpose. I know some relationships 'just happen' and people don't see much meaning or purpose to them, but a life worth living surely involves meaningful relationships that are not simply going through the motions. The same can be said of God.
Joe - our relationships have meaning to us in the context in which we live. On that basis the life of an ant has meaning in the context of its role in a colony. The question is do our lives have a wider meaning than the life of an ant (other than that deriving from our greater understanding)?
Sam - isn't this some sort of category error or s/t? Anyway if all higher order animals died out it would be hard to say that forgiveness existed. People hope that God is s.t. more. Also can s.t. which exists in the sense of forgiveness "do" anything, have any attitudes to anything, understand anything? What is the distinction on this basis between God and myths which do not assert devine nature?
On "4":
It seems to me that the word "meaning" is the problem here. We say something has meaning in context, as it becomes usefull. Meaning is mostly transitory and generaly stands in relation to something else; "purpose" is a word that is also used in this way. Hammers have a purpose, words have meaning, and they stand in relation to something, they're pragmatic.
What, however, does life stand against? The alternative to life I suppose is death, but there is no experience to be shared in this. So life stands alone as this lonely thing. What's life's use, what does it stand for? And what joy/happieness is there to be had if one does no know and understand the alternative? Good and bad (suffering and happyness) are self affirming of one another. If I only tasted one taste and felt one emotion, I may not know what to make of it either way. If you take away suffering, do you really have happieness? I would say no, without knowledge of the one, the other does not exist.
The tree of knowledge didn't introduce us to sin so much, it introduced us to the world of opposites and thus the world of taste and emotion. But that doesn't in itself have any meaning.
Not physically. The post doesn't physically exist in reality. It is a title we give to the person holding the job.
Forgiveness? Pardon my cynicism, but I have just read Dominic Deegan and I find that a little naive (5 major characters have killed in cold blood).
However forgiveness itself doesn't exist any more than the age 18 has some special significance in nature. It is a social construct. As such, it has no existance outside a group and only exists because of their actions.
Joe got it right. Either Jesus was real or not.
Life doesn't have an inherent meaning. People create their own purposes and goals- it isn't handed on a platter. After all, you had to have a courtship to get in your position- you had to intentionally choost this path because you wanted it. The purpose was origionally generated internally.
Uh... God isn't dependant on relationships anymore than anything else. Otherwise this would be D&D- where God gets power from worship.
I'll be more specific about meaning. There is no God and the universe is nonsentient. As such we aren't given meaning. Which is good. Slaves and servants are the kinds who are given meaning.
1) God has acted - loads of times according to the Old Testament. Blowing up bad guys; moving sea about; making food fall from the sky. Making a garden. Lots of people don't believe it these days even if it's in writing. Lots of people did not believe it then. Few people take notice when God acts.
2) If I were God, I would respond to suffering the same way God does. I'd start with a garden.
3) As far as I can ascertain, the nature of God is love. Suffering is an inevitable part of life. Suffering is not the be-all and end-all. We can idolise suffering if we are not careful and prayerful. I believe God knows what it is like to see a child suffer. He suffers with us.
4) If these are the wrong questions to ask, right ones could be, "Will this nice weather last for the weekend?" and, 'Where's my tea?'
Oh, and what's a 'meme' when it's at home?
This meme has traveled a bit around the blogsphere. For what it is worth, here is a link to my response at http://you.cowpi.com/2008/06/god...06/
god_and_evil. Two approaches are discussed, a somewhat lengthy philosophical approach and an affective approach.
Commenting by HaloScan
